La Carniceria

August 2008

Mitla, Oaxaca, Mexico

The Hammock Lady, August 2008

Juchitan, Oaxaca, Mexico

This lady has been selling her hammocks in the town square of downtown Juchitan for years. I've bought hammocks from her on three seperate occasions. She can spot a tourist (ie, a potential customer) from blocks away.

A family in Oaxaca City

BYU Triathlon

Today I ran the first ever BYU Triathlon. It was a shorty- a 200yard swim, a 6.2 mile bike, and a 1.8 mile run. I've done other triathlons before, but it had been a long, long time. Because it was so short, I didn't actually train. Ever. I do ride my bike around a lot, and I try to run a couple of days per week, so I wasn't too out of shape.
Check in was from 8:30-9:00am. After checking in a getting my number written on my calves and arms, I set up my bike, shoes, and other stuff in the transition area just outside the pool (on campus). After some stretching, a few warm up laps, and a pre-race meeting, it was time to start. Instead of starting us all at the same time or in heats, one person was allowed to start every 10 seconds. All 154 of us lined up on the pool deck according to our own assessment of our swimming abilities (we had filled out a survey before hand, and were assigned a number). I was assigned to start fourth. After a round of loud cheers, the first swimmer started. Forty seconds later, I pushed off the wall and was off. I had set the goal not to get passed on the swim, and I didn't. Two minutes and thirty seconds later, I climbed out of the pool and ran out the door to the transition area. I couldn't get a road bike for the race, so I was on my mountain bike. So even though I passed two guys in the transition area, they quickly caught up to me on their road bikes.
My goal on the bike was to not push myself too hard. That way, I could still feel okay on the run. It was really tempting to try to hold pace with some of the faster guys on the bike, but I was able to remind myself to run my own race and not to worry about anybody else. When it came time to leave the bikes behind, this self restrain paid off. I quickly caught up to several of the guys who had passed me before.
I finished with a total time of 43 minutes and 15 seconds. I met my only two goals-to run my own race without worrying about anybody else, and to enjoy myself.                                                      

Freedom Peak

Any adventure that involves getting up before four am is bound to be epic. And this one was. 
This morning's trip began when Michael knocked on my door at 4am. We had planned on bagging some peaks up above rock canyon. Because of the recent snow on the mountain tops, I had rented an ice ax from BYU's Outdoors Unlimited. Neither one of us has a car, so we rode our bikes. The ride up to Rock Canyon is long and steep. Despite temperatures in the low thirties, I was sweating by the time we made it to the parking lot. From there, we locked our bikes and started hiking up the canyon. After about three miles, we found ourselves in the Rock Canyon campground, which was completely abandoned. We had a little trouble trying to find our trail on the other side of the campground. While searching in the dark, we saw headlights in the trees about three or four hundred yards away. We bushwacked our way up the mountainside to where the lights had been, and found ourselves on a dirt road we hadn't know about. We were finally able to find our trail, and we continued upward and onward. Pretty soon it started snowing. Just a few small flakes at first, then a bit more, until it was coming down hard all around us. Thick clouds rolled in, obscuring our view of the mountains. We lost the trail, but the route was obvious. With a shallow layer of snow on the loose rock hillside, the going was tough. The ground got so steep that climbing further would have been nearly impossible without an ice ax.
Micheal had an interview to be to at 1pm, which meant we had to have him home by noon-ish. Unfortunately, this meant turning around only half an hour or so from the summit. But mountaineering isn't really about summits anyways. All in all, it was a good 6 miles or so each way, with more than 5000 ft of elevation gain.
The descent was fairly straightforward, and we were able to get back to our bikes and ride home just a few minutes after noon. I slept through the BYU football game without any shame.

Trilogy Butress

In one of my previous posts ("My First Multi-Pitch") I told you about the adventure Jeff and I had on our attempt to climb Trilogy Buttress, a four pitch tower in Rock Canyon. If you read that post, you'll remember that, not only did we fail to make it up the thing, we actually got stuck, and had to spend considerable time figuring out how to get down. Last week, after talking to the guy who made the route, I decided to give it another try. My partner for the climb was Micheal Davidson, a guy I recently met in my new ward here at BYU. After examining pictures and reading descriptions of the Buttress, we decided to take a different route for the 

first pitch. It was rated only 5.6 (really, really easy), but our info showed that although it was a full rope's length (60 meters) long, there were only four bolts on the whole thing. If you do the math, that's one bolt every fifty feet or so. When I asked the guy whole put the bolts in about it, he said that you could definitely bring some trad gear (cam's, nuts, chock, etc), but the rope drag would be awful. 

Nonetheless, 50 ft between bolts is too much for me, so w

e did bring some trad gear, and the rope drag was indeed horrendous. 

Micheal led the first and third pitches, and I led the second and fourth. When we got to where Jeff and I had gotten stuck, we found that we had been literally ten feet from the anchors we had looked for but never found. This time, we found them without trouble, and were able to continue upward and onward without any problems. The climbing was lots of fun, the view was spectacular, and the exposure was dizzying. The last pitch was only a 5.8, but let 

me assure you that 5.8 climbing on top rope, 20ft above the ground is one thing, and 5.8 climbing on lead, 10 ft above your last bolt with 500ft of air below you is 

an entirely 

different thing altogether. Fortunately, I was able to keep my head together, and both Micheal and I made it to the top without any problems. In

stead of rappelling, we were able to hike down the back side and make it to the car just after 

dark. 

But the story doesn't end there. Three days later, I was on Trilogy Buttress again, this time with Jeff Belnap and Jason Webb. We got started just before dark, and made sure to bring headlamps. 

Partly because it was getting dark, but mostly because they are wimps, both Jason and Jeff decided that they weren't going to lead climb at all. Of course, they didn't decide this until we were already at the top of the first pitch. So I got to lead all four pitches (Okay, so maybe leading a new route, in the dark, hundreds of feet off the ground would be a bit scary). In the dark, I didn't get the same 

sense of height that I did in the day-my attention was primarily confined to the small bubble of light from my headlamp.

The highlight of the climb came on the fourth pitch. A few feet above the first bolt, the handhold I was using broke loose, and I suddenly found myself falling through the air. When the rope jerked me to a stop I was a good ten or twelve feet lower than where I had started. When I regained my composure I was able to finish the climb without any more falls. The view from the top was just as amazing at night as it was in the daylight.